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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22394461">The Morning(star) After</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayo/pseuds/rayo'>rayo</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Part 3 spoilers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 08:55:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,220</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22394461</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayo/pseuds/rayo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A Painful NickxSabrina Reunion</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nicholas Scratch/Sabrina Spellman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Morning(star) After</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Woo. Literally traumatized from Part 3. I hate the CAOS Writers Room right now. Here's a short thing I've been writing because I can't stop thinking about how painful it was.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>The Morning(star) After</b>
</p><p>A sixteen year old girl had successfully halted the apocalypse, but the break wasn’t clean. </p><p>Thanks to the Hellish instability brought on by Lucifer’s absence. Everyone was left to deal with the aftermath of the realms being out of tune for an extended period of time. It sent shockwaves through the mortal realm that were still being felt even three years later, but the Spellman household was doing their best form of damage control.</p><p>Sabrina couldn’t risk her doppelganger fix being exposed and despite Ambrose's anxieties about the whole situation dying down, just as their version of peace returned, Sabrina started spiraling. While Harvey, Roz, and Theo ran off to college, Sabrina was left in Greendale.</p><p>Prudence and Nick ran off together immediately after they eviscerated the pagans; leaving Ambrose heart broken and Sabrina still reeling at the way things were left between her and Nick, the candle ritual may have helped dull her feelings for Harvey, but she was left wondering if what Prudence told her was nothing more than child’s play. Because even in Nick’s absence, she wept for him.</p><p>Despite rocky beginnings, Zelda’s new coven thrived in numbers and power. Recruiting witches was easier when the subject of worship was a moon Goddess, rather than the devil himself.</p><p>Ambrose found himself a regular at Dorian’s, usually only for a few drinks, but he’d occasionally drink himself into oblivion, and Sabrina would always be there to save him from himself.</p><p>Nick and Prudence were on a journey. Their exposure to other forms of witchcraft had sparked an excuse for their travels, even if it didn’t feel right, they were each others last remaining family. </p><p>Prudence was learning to live without her sisters, and attempt to move beyond the guilt of not killing Father Blackwood when he was right in front of her.</p><p>Nick was learning to exist, even with the devil’s debris out of his bloodstream, his soul became unrecognizable. Witches didn’t believe in therapy, or talking through their struggles. Despite Sabrina’s attempts to unravel him emotionally, Nick erected castle walls around his heart that were so high, he would never allow himself to hurt again.</p><p>His existence grew dull, as memories of the Dark Lord’s possession still plagued him, everything paled in comparison, he couldn’t feel anymore. Infernal pain desensitized him to anything a mortal may find exciting.  When he wasn’t studying <em> non-satanic </em> witchcraft out of spite, he was drinking and fucking his life away. </p><p>As he started to see things more clearly, he’s thought more about his time in the flesh acheron. Satan had raped him in every non-physical way, but the suffering and humiliation he felt at the merciless hands of Lilith was far more unsettling. He’d debated going to Hell, and figuring out a way to kill both Lilith and Lucifer, but everytime he made progress on his emotional health, there was another setback he’d be forced to attend to.</p><p>What Nick and Prudence shared wasn’t love, just a mutual understanding that their world, is nothing like they once thought it was.</p><p>It’s why when Prudence and Nick find themselves back in Greendale, three years after the almost-apocalypse, Nick can’t bring himself to see Sabrina.</p><p>Nick’s already inebriated, deciding to swing by Dorian’s. Even the French can’t distill Absinthe as well as Dorian, and Nick allows the burn to dull his mind. It was hard to feel remorseful for past transgressions when you can’t remember your own name.</p><p>Ambrose came in for a night of drinking, dropping his book at the sight of Nick Scratch slouched over a barstool. If Nick was back, it likely meant Prudence was as well, and that wound, even three years later, reopened at the thought.</p><p>Dorian knew what he was doing when he called Sabrina, she walked into the Gray room for Ambrose like she had every month since Prudence left, expecting to save her drunk cousin from himself, her breath was taken away when she saw Nick sitting there at the opposite end of the bar.</p><p><em> Did Nick put Dorian up to this? </em>She wondered.</p><p>She figured he must not have though, because as Sabrina was attempting to lift her cousin up into her arms, Nick collapsed out of the barstool.</p><p>Against her better judgement, she took Ambrose back home, but shortly returned for Nick. A soft gasp escaping her lips at the sight of him still on the ground as she returned.</p><p>She takes him back to the Mortuary, placing him in her bed.</p><p>He may not deserve her compassion, given everything that was said between them, but she had loved him, and it hurt to see him hurting so badly.</p><p>Whoever said that<em> absence makes the heart grow fonder </em>, must have been a charlatan, she’s sure of it. Sabrina sits across the room, staring at Nick as he sleeps. She loathes him now. Loathes him for ruining their relationship. Loathes him for running away instead of sticking around to deal with the aftermath of her broken heart.</p><p>As he wakes in a bed, far too soft to be his own. Nick wonders who he’d slept with to wake in a bed this nice, wonders if it’s Prudence playing a cruel trick on him.</p><p>When the smell of warm cinnamon-sugar hits him, his heart rate spikes. He can’t remember anything from yesterday, or even a few days back, but he’s grown to associate the smell of cinnamon-sugar wafting through the air with Hilda Spellman’s french toast.</p><p>“<em> lacunae magicae, </em>” he attempts in a panic.</p><p>“It won’t work,” she explains, and Nick might as well have taken a sucker punch to the gut.</p><p>“After Hell, I started spellcasting in my sleep, my aunts had to put up sigils to prevent any unfortunate mishaps,” she gestures to the gilded sacred symbols adorning her bedroom walls</p><p>He can’t bring himself to look at her, “why am I here Sabrina?</p><p>“You were passed out on the floor at Dorian’s. I was picking up my equally intoxicated cousin, and Dorian was pissed you couldn’t pay.”</p><p>“I settled your tab for you,” she adds.</p><p>“I didn’t ask for your help Sabrina. <em> God knows I’ve been drinking myself away just fine for the past three years without it... </em>” he mutters, still avoiding her steely gaze.</p><p>“I wish you would’ve kissed me when I asked you to. Despite all the betrayal and pain we’ve caused each other. I wish you would’ve kissed me, so you wouldn’t have been able to run away...” Her voice revealing a sincere vulnerability Nick wasn’t expecting</p><p>She was planning to yell at him, she had a variety of monologues prepared for this very moment, and none of them seemed right.</p><p>His head was pounding, and his heart hurt. He wanted to get up and run, but they were here now; and despite all rational thought telling him to leave, Nick knows this is something they both need to address.</p><p>He nearly panics when she rose from her seat to sit on the bed next to him, as if being this close to her would have dangerous consequences.</p><p>"If I'm ever going to have a shot at moving on from you, I need closure. And I think you do as well," Sabrina briefly covers his hand with her own, before retracting it as if she burned herself.</p>
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